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Samuel Beazley led an interesting life. Born in Westminster in 1786, he wrote his first play at age 12. He later served in the British Army during the Peninsular War, where he had two interesting adventures in particular. At one point, he was knocked unconscious during a skirmish and, thought to be dead, was prepared for burial, only to wake up at the last minute. He also played a role in the rescue of the Duchesse d’Angoulême, daughter of Louis XVI, from approaching French forces led by Napoleon.

Beazley returned to England after the war and wrote over 100 plays, mostly comedies. He also wrote two novels – The Roué (1828) and The Oxonians (1830) – and translated several Italian opera librettos into English. He also designed a spa, a town hall, a couple of hotels, the South-Eastern Railway Company’s London Bridge station and several other stations on their North Kent line. In Warwickshire, he also designed the hilariously named Studley Castle.

But Beazley was mostly known for being Britain’s first “theatre architect”. He designed St James’s Theatre, the Royalty Theatre and the City of London Theatre, led major renovations of the Adelphi Theatre and the Drury Lane Theatre, and designed two theatres each in Dublin, Belgium and India and one in Brazil. He even designed the Lyceum Theatre twice: his original 1816 building burnt down in 1830, so he designed its replacement, which still stands today:

Yet, despite all his good works, Beazley is best remembered today… for a prank.

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Beazley had a friend named Theodore Hook. Born in Charlotte Street, London on September 22, 1788, Hook was the son of James Hook, a composer of popular songs of the period. His elder brother, also named James Hook, became Dean of Worcester Cathedral.

Theodore was something of a musical prodigy: his father often took him to theatres to show him off to other performers, and at sixteen Hook debuted his first work, a comic opera called The Soldier’s Return. He wrote several more works, all of which were commercially popular. He seemed to have a bright future, and his music so charmed the Prince Regent – the future King George IV – that the prince named him accountant-general and treasurer of Mauritius, a gig that paid him a healthy £2,000 a year.

Unfortunately, £12,000 ended up missing from the island’s accounts, and Hook could provide no answer for the discrepancy. So he was arrested and returned to England. While awaiting trial, Hook made money by writing articles for newspapers and magazines. His writings were so popular that he was able to start a newspaper, John Bull, which was yet another success.

However, Hook never did address the missing £12,000. He was arrested again, and this time sent to a “sponging-house”, a kind of halfway house for debtors. Typically, one would be sent to a sponging-house as a last ditch warning to figure out a way to pay off debts. If unsuccessful, the debtor was usually sent to debtor’s prison. Hook was able to use his charm to get out of the house after a couple of years. But the debt hung over him the remainder of his life, and after he died on August 24, 1841 the government seized his estate to settle the debt.

Continue reading “The Berners Street Hoax”

From the History Blog’s “Well, the Legend is Real” Department:

Laurentius – known to history as Lawrence of Rome – was born in 225 AD, and served as a deacon of the Catholic Church under Pope Sixtus II. Sixtus and Lawrence lived in Rome during the reign of Valerian the Elder, who ruled from 253 to 260. And if there was one thing Valerian couldn’t stand, it was Christians. In 258, Valerian went on a rampage, ordering the executions of as many deacons, priests and bishops as he could get his hands on. Sixtus was beheaded on August 6, and Lawrence was scheduled to die on August 10.

But, according to legend, Lawrence wasn’t beheaded or crucified. So the story goes, he was taken to the area of what is now the church at San Lorenzo in Panisperna and burned on a gridiron. And supposedly, as he sat roasting over the fire, his last words were “turn me over … I’m done on this side”… which is why St. Lawrence is the patron saint of both comedians and chefs. He’s also the patron saint of related culinary professions, such as brewers, butchers, confectioners, cutlers, restaurateurs and vintners. Because of his work with preserving early church documents he’s also the patron saint of archivists and librarians. He did a lot for the poor, especially children, so he’s also the patron saint of paupers and school children. For reasons I’m not really clear on, he’s also the patron saint of armorers, glaziers, laundry workers, tanners and the diocese of Amarillo, Texas.

Although it’s kind of an amusing story – who even knew that comedians had a patron saint? – evidence for or against it is kind of murky. The first written account of the story comes from the book Liber Peristephanon, written by the Roman Christian poet Aurelius Prudentius Clemens. But Prudentius was born in Tarraconensis (northern Spain) in 348, ninety years after Lawrence had been martyred.

One theory – from the fabulously named Father Pio Franchi de ‘Cavalieri – says that the whole thing boils down to a transcription error. At the time, Christian authors and record keepers would note the death of a martyr with the phrase passus est, meaning “he suffered”. Maybe someone somewhere accidentally wrote it down as assus est (“he was roasted”), and someone else made up a story to fit the text. I mean, can’t you just imagine a modern day DMV worker typing  “Lawrence of Rome” into his computer? “Look lady, it says here he was ROASTED, okay? Unless you got paperwork from the Department of Health that says otherwise, he’s ROASTED to the State of New York, OK?”

It’s thought that Constantine built a small chapel on the site in Lawrence’s honor, and there is an actual gridiron – said to be from the martyrdom, naturally – under the altar at the Church of St Lawrence at Lucina. However, the gridiron was given to the church by Pope Paschal II, who reigned as pope from August 13, 1099 until his death on January 21, 1118. I’m not going to research where the gridiron allegedly was for 800 years before ending up at the church, but you can draw your own conclusions. Incidentally, Paschal II was the first pope to appoint a bishop to North America, and he did it 400 years before Columbus sailed to the New World: Erik Gnupsson (in his native tongue, Eiríkr Gnúpsson, but also known under the Latinized name Henricus) was appointed Bishop of Greenland and Vinland, the latter of which many historians think was Newfoundland.

Whether or not Lawrence died joking about being “ready to turn”, the real joke ended up being on Valerian. Two years after he’d ordered the death of Lawrence, Sixtus and the others, Valerian found himself at the Battle of Edessa against an army of Persians led by Shapur I.

According to most accounts, the battle was something of a stalemate, so Valerian decided to meet with Shapur to work out some kind of truce. But Shapur decided to seize Valerian instead, which caused the entire Roman army to surrender. What happened next depends on who you read. Persian and secular authors say that Valerian was taken to a city called Bishapur and lived out the rest of his life in relative comfort. Edward Gibbon, the English author and historian whose six volume The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was published between 1776 and 1788, tells it a bit differently:

We are told that Valerian, in chains, but invested with the Imperial purple, was exposed to the multitude, a constant spectacle of fallen greatness; and that whenever the Persian monarch mounted on horseback, he placed his foot on the neck of a Roman emperor. Notwithstanding all the remonstrances of his allies, who repeatedly advised him to remember the vicissitudes of fortune, to dread the returning power of Rome, and to make his illustrious captive the pledge of peace, not the object of insult, Sapor still remained inflexible. When Valerian sunk under the weight of shame and grief, his skin, stuffed with straw, and formed into the likeness of a human figure, was preserved for ages in the most celebrated temple of Persia; a more real monument of triumph, than the fancied trophies of brass and marble so often erected by Roman vanity.

Other accounts say that Valerian was killed after being made to swallow molten gold, or by being flayed alive. The source for most of these tales, it should be noted, was a Roman Christian author named Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius (“Lactantius” for short), who just might have had an ax to grind against Valerian for martyring Sixtus, Lawrence and the others. But Lactantius would go on to become an advisor to Constantine I, and Valerian would remain the only Roman Emperor in history to be captured and held as a prisoner of war.